A Trip Through the Sea-Space: Astronautical! by Brooklin Stormie

We discovered Annick Press at the Toronto Comic Book Fair this year, and I had a really lovely chat with one of their editors.

As Di and I are beginning to shop our own middle-grade graphic novel, Vincent and the Vanishing Pot, getting the chance to talk with editors and publishers at these fairs has become one of my favourite parts of going. You learn so much from a simple conversation, and this one was particularly welcome.

And really, any publisher who publishes Robert Munsch is already all right by me.

That was how Astronautical! by Brooklin Stormie came home with us.

And what a wonderfully strange little universe it is.

A hundred years ago, the planet Zephyr mysteriously shattered. Now its pieces float through space like islands, with ships sailing between them and all sorts of creatures making their homes across the scattered world.

Brothers Max and Lari live aboard a merchant ship with their father, Captain Cherryhair. When he is kidnapped by Cynosure, the Planet Breaker, the boys set off across the galaxy to find him.

From there, things get wonderfully weird.

There are stars running a ferryboat business, space whales, black holes, strange creatures, floating worlds and a whole lot of chaos.

• 

• 

A Fairy Tale in Space

One of the things I loved about Astronautical! is that underneath all the science-fiction silliness, it has the bones of an old adventure tale.

A parent disappears. Two children set off to find him. They meet strange creatures along the way, make mistakes, receive help from unexpected places and gradually discover that the world isn't quite what they thought it was.

I love fairy tales from all traditions, and I'm particularly fond of stories that take those familiar structures and turn them sideways.

Here, the forest has become space.

The islands float among the stars.

And instead of a horse or a little wooden boat, we're sailing through the galaxy.

It feels familiar and completely bonkers at the same time.

Bold, Simple and Easy to Read

Stormie's drawings are bold, simple and wonderfully expressive. There's an ease to them that suits this strange world perfectly.

But what I particularly enjoyed was the page layout.

The pages are clear. They're never crowded. Your eye always knows where to go next.

That sounds like such a simple thing, but in a graphic novel with this much worldbuilding, strange characters and information flying around, it matters enormously. I found myself getting swept along by the pages without having to work at reading them.

That's something Di and I think about constantly while making Vincent. A page can be beautiful, but it still has a job to do. It has to move your eye. It has to tell you where to look. And sometimes giving a drawing a little more room to breathe does far more than squeezing another panel onto the page.

Astronautical! does that beautifully.

• 

• 

A Little Science Among the Chaos

This is a world where wooden ships sail through space, whales encounter black holes and comets play with time. Some of the science is real. Some of it most definitely isn't.

And that's part of the fun.

Stormie has created a universe where science and complete nonsense happily live side by side. You can simply race along with the adventure, or stop and wonder, Hang on. Is that actually true?

At the back of the book, there's more about the real science behind the fiction, which I loved. It gives curious kids somewhere to go once the adventure is over without ever making the story itself feel like a science lesson.

Brothers in Space

At the centre of everything are Max and Lari.

They're not perfect little heroes, which I liked. They make bad decisions. They don't always listen. They frustrate each other. And eventually they have to learn that being responsible doesn't mean doing everything yourself.

There's a nice shift in their relationship as the adventure gets bigger and the consequences become more serious. The rescue mission may be driving the plot, but the brothers learning when to lead, when to listen and when to ask for help gives the story its heart.

And somehow, among exploding planets, space whales and intergalactic chaos, that part feels very down to earth.

One We Were Glad to Find

Astronautical! is playful, odd, adventurous and very easy to disappear into.

I loved its bold artwork and beautifully clear pages, but I think what stayed with me most was how comfortably it mixes things that shouldn't necessarily belong together: fairy-tale adventure, sibling comedy, space fantasy and little bits of genuine science.

It doesn't seem particularly worried about whether all those things are supposed to fit together.

It just sets sail.

And I'm very glad we happened to find it.

Until our new review! Annellie